Marbella Ibarra, left, pictured with player Inglis Hernández, was the founder of Mexico’s first professional women’s football team, Xolas de Tijuana.
Photograph: handout

Marbella Ibarra was football mad in a machista country where women’s sport is often given short shrift. But with a combination of thick skin, a gift for scouting talent, and unshakable tenacity, Ibarra convinced Mexico that women could play the beautiful game at a professional level.

Ibarra, 46, transformed the face of football, but even that wasn’t enough to shield her from the tsunami of violence wreaking havoc in one of Mexico’s most popular tourist states.

Last week her body was discovered in Rosarito, a beach resort just south of Tijuana. Ibarra had been missing for almost a month, when her body – badly beaten and with hands and feet tied, was discovered wrapped in a plastic sheet on 15 October.

It’s unclear where, why and how long Ibarra was held until she was killed, and the cause of death has not yet been confirmed.

But the same modus operandi – a tortured body abandoned in a public place after weeks without a trace – has been used in multiple female murders in the area in recent years.

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“The signs suggest a hate crime, and the fact she was a public figure suggest some sort of message. The authorities must investigate the murder in this context,” said Meritxell Calderón, a lawyer and women’s rights defender based in Tijuana.

Tijuana is a bustling coastal metropolis bordering San Diego, with 1.7 million habitants. It is the world’s busiest border crossing, and home to huge numbers of economic migrants, especially poor women, who work in the city’s maquiladora factories, resorts and seedy bars.

This year, things are worse: 251 people were murdered in July, the most violent month since records began. Kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking are rife.

Amid this despair, Ibarra gave young women the chance to play football. She enjoyed playing both football and basketball as a hobby, but always fancied herself more as a coach, and used income from her beauty salon to create an amateur women’s team, Isamar FC.

Relatives of Marbella Ibarra participate in her funeral in the city of Tijuana, Mexico, on Thursday. Photograph: Joebeth Terriquez/EPA

This wasn’t enough: Ibarra wanted women’s football taken seriously, and in 2014 founded the first female professional team, the Xolas, as a sister club to the male Xolos of Tijuana. With no competition in Mexico, the team crossed the border to play in the US professional league, and Ibarra often had to subsidise travel costs for the players.

In 2017, after years of setbacks, Ibarra’s dream was finally realised: Mexico inaugurated a professional women’s league. Several Xolas players were signed by rival clubs.

Ibarra was forced to leave her beloved club when she started studying for her professional coaching qualification, but was hoping to return soon. Meanwhile she dedicated her energies to a foundation providing financial assistance to young local female footballers so they could attend trials with clubs across the country.

Fabiola Ibarra (no relation), 24, plays for the Guadalajara-based club Atlas Femenil and the national team, but credits Ibarra’s coaching and support for instilling confidence in all her players. “She fought hard every single day for many years to make professional football a reality in Mexico, and let players like me fulfil our dreams.”

Earlier this year, the turnout at the Mexican women’s league final set a world record for a women’s club match with 50,000 supporters.

Striker Inglis Hernández, 28, worked with Ibarra for almost a decade: first as an amateur, then with the Xolas. “She was thirsty for knowledge about women’s football,” she said. “She always told us there were no limits to our dreams, even the ‘craziest’ ones.

“Let there be justice not only for Mar, but for all the women victims of violence in Mexico.”

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Spiraling violence in and around Tijuana is linked to rival drug cartels fighting over transit routes, and the fractured local drug market competing for tens of thousands of crystal meth and heroin addicts.

In Tijuana, activists warn about the targeting of women who live alone, and those who identify as transexual or lesbian.

After a mass held on Wednesday, her brother Jonathan, described Ibarra as a lion who protected her players. “My sister was someone who always got the best out of you, she always found the right words and advice, and had a wonderful impact on Baja California. She was a great woman. We hope the authorities do their job and help us, that’s all we can ask.”